Renovating an Old Barn
Renovating an old barn is indeed a labor of love. We purchased this farm 4/7/20 and thought that we would have the barn wrapped up by at least early fall…BAHAHAHAHA!!!
We are dreamers and doers, but I think sometimes the dreamer in us both gets the best of our goals. As I sit here writing today we are riding the struggle bus of balancing BIG dreams with the reality of contractors that aren’t able to meet our deadlines and a looming GIANT celebration of marriage scheduled here late next month, hold on tight its going to be a wild ride…
The journey of renovating a project like this started at the Warren County Zoning Office… First of all it’s a bit intimidating walking into an office of the government with all the rules and regulations of building and zoning, but we have to admit that the people we have worked with have been quite lovely. We have been working with them for the past 19 months or so to establish this property as a place for community to gather safely. It’s been a lot of work and many, many, many hoops to jump through, as you can imagine bringing a 100 year old barn up to code is quite the challenge. Quickly after establishing that we could indeed use this property to gather per the zoning officials, we moved forward with our structural engineer. Our Engineer came out and deemed it a solid place, then went home to type up a wonderfully thorough report on all the things we would need to do to shore it up, and reinforce all that was already here. Now onto finding a brave architect that knew anything about barns… listen there aren’t a lot of those… it’s been interesting and frustrating… there’s a lot of waiting around for everyone and their reports and precision drawings, all elements of great importance when you’re doing any project. Ben and I are very much use to doing projects on our own, and while that’s a bunch of hard work, you are not waiting on anyone besides yourselves, so we find ourselves in a strange new world of “hurry up and wait”… We have had many days of feeling like we will absolutely go bananas in the waiting, although these are the places and times where you learn to lean on and trust fully in God. This project is truly in his hands, we have to surrender daily to him so we don’t go completely nuts!!
Architectural drawings in hand we went in search for contractors that had the skills to do all the different items on our list. Structural work, especially digging through fieldstone was not in our wheelhouse of skills, so we started interviewing, we spoke with quite a few businesses for this part of the job, only one agreed to do it, and it has not been going well. This past week, sadly we had to part ways with them. The foundation is so important, there’s no getting it wrong, they have already had to tear out the concrete once to do over, and it still wasn’t right, and we are two months behind of schedule, so we have had to move on to another company. They will come this week with lots of skill and big machines, and we hope to be wrapping up the foundation this week. New joist will be placed soon after, then the new floors will be laid! The final piece before our first wedding at the end of the next month. There are many other pieces coming together all around this, it’s a circus of a time for us right now, but we have been so blessed by our family that keeps stepping into offer their love and skills as we continue building this little dream that the Father has put in our hearts. If you have any interest in helping us and you have skills you want to share, please contact us at woodallandco@gmail.com. We would love your prayers. Can’t wait to gather with you here.
May God bless you & keep you,
Ben & Kelly Woodall
